


Beautiful Things

by RossettiMucha



Category: Holby City
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-11 00:00:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 11,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8944603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RossettiMucha/pseuds/RossettiMucha
Summary: Bernie is beautiful and brilliant and golden, and Serena wants so badly to reach out and touch her - if only Bernie would allow it. ORSerena is a pure and forgiving angel with an endless capacity for love, and Bernie is emotionally stunted.Snapshots of (eventually) post-Kyiv Bernie and Serena learning to communicate.





	1. Chapter 1

One of Serena’s strongest and most persistent childhood memories is of coveting her grandmother’s doll. She had sat high up on a shelf in the master bedroom, well out of reach of messy little hands, and gazed down imperiously on Serena when she went for tea on Sundays, reluctantly buttoned into her best dress. It had itched at the collar and had been too tight under the arms, and her trips to see the doll were consequently always accompanied by a slight feeling of creeping discomfort. She had made a habit of sneaking off while the grown-ups gossiped over after dinner cigarettes - moving slowly because the skirt of the much-hated dress flicked up when she ran, and moving quietly because she had a suspicion that she wasn’t supposed to be in Granny’s bedroom at all. 

When she turned seven, her ever-watchful mother – who had of course noticed Serena’s disappearances from the dinner table - gave her a china doll of her own for her birthday. She’d had articulated joints, and eyes that blinked closed when Serena put her to bed at the end of the day, and layers upon layers of frothy white petticoats, which were starched monthly to keep them fresh. She had been pretty, with long brown ringlets and eyes like her own, and Serena had loved her for it: made her the assisting nurse in all her teddy bear surgeries as a little girl, and then wrapped her up carefully in newspaper and cotton wool, and taken her across the ocean to Harvard as a lucky charm when she was older. She’d treasured that doll, right up to the moment that Edward – drunk, as usual - had knocked her off her stool in the corner of the bedroom, and shattered her sweet little face against the hardwood floor. 

What she had always secretly preferred though, was the doll at her grandmother’s house. That doll had been untouchable and beautiful, with hair like spun gold that Serena longed to brush, and big blue eyes that had always looked a little cruel. She’d looked like she would be the most popular girl in school, and Serena had thought that, had she been real, she wouldn’t have had to wear any horrible itchy pink frock to visit her Granny. 

On the day that Serena meets Bernie Wolfe, she hasn’t thought of either doll in years. 

It’s cold, and she wishes that she’d put on a bigger coat; that’s what’s at the forefront of her mind. Behind that, as she jigs up and down on the spot, is something about shitty cars and shitty mechanics and people who _just can’t help but let you down_. She’s just about to launch herself into a minor (very minor, she’s 50 years old after all) tantrum, when Bernie makes her entrance stage right and improves her day immeasurably - and, probably, without even realising it - with nothing more than a smirk and some well timed banter, like Serena’s very own personal knight in a soft pink duster coat.

Serena makes a point of keeping an eye out for Bernie after that. Quite simply, she wants to make friends. It’s not like she has many of them, and Bernie is dry and witty and intriguing, and she seems lonely too - always lurking in doorways and on half-hidden benches, set slightly apart from the rest of the team on Keller. Except, the more Serena sees of Bernie, the more she thinks about her grandmother’s old doll, sitting high up on that dusty shelf. At first, she's not quite sure why. It isn’t that she looks anything like the doll: Bernie’s eyes are warm and brown, and far kinder than the glassy blue gaze that had stared down at her every Sunday evening; and, although her hair is blonde, it’s the wrong shade, and it doesn’t curl evenly into ringlets. But as Serena gets to know Bernie – as they struggle their way through the no man’s land between ‘acquaintances’ and ‘friends’ – she realises that Bernie, really, is as inaccessible to her as the doll had been. She’s beautiful and wonderful, and always, always just out of reach. So Serena begins to covet her, almost without realising it, as she had coveted the doll all those years before.

Serena, quite simply, loves beautiful things. It’s not that she’s superficial, or vain, or vapidly, shallowly girlish. She has never really wanted anything superfluously beautiful; never wanted something that didn’t have a use, that appealed only to her aesthetic tastes. But she likes to surround herself with lovely things, and bask in them; a treat for herself, because she can, and because she works in an austere, grey NHS hospital, and she doesn’t see why every aspect of her life has to be constructed in polystyrene ceiling tiles and cheap linoleum. She furnishes her house to be opulent as well as practical, with soft, rich furnishings and yellow lighting; she buys horribly expensive silk shirts because they’re pretty as well as comfortable, and she loves the way they slip so softly, like the whisper of a breath, over her freshly washed and perfumed skin in the morning; she likes good food and good wine and the luxury of time to sit and enjoy it, though she rarely has good company to enjoy it with. 

Serena comes to realise, over time, that she wants her new friend in some capacity in which she doesn’t quite have her. Bernie is soft and warm and golden, and comprised of so many glorious parts, and Serena wants to examine each of them in turn; to bask in their light, and surround herself in that feeling that is uniquely ‘Bernie’ - a feeling so rich and deep that she cannot name it – would not _dare_ to name it – but which makes her feel so _alive_. Bernie is comfortable and untouchable all at once; a best friend and a challenging puzzle and the source of so much new emotion in Serena that she can’t quite begin to comprehend it.

Serena thinks Bernie is the most beautiful thing she’s ever known.

So she invites her out for coffee, and drinks at Albie’s, and picks at the threads of her beautiful mind, because she want to know Bernie more than she’s ever wanted anything in her entire life. She invites her to assist in surgeries, and gives her half her ward, makes Henrik construct a specialist trauma unit as a gift. Sometimes it seems as though she’s almost within touching distance – like she could almost _understand_ Bernie, like she’s edged her way through to her inner life against all odds – but then Bernie withdraws, and Serena is that little girl once more, looking up at the doll with the glass eyes, high up on a shelf she can’t quite reach.


	2. Chapter 2

When Bernie is in Kiev, and Serena has struggled through the mist in her head to think of something – of anything at all, anything other than the absolute lethargic emptiness that leaves her lying on her side on top of her bed covers until two in the afternoon – it seems as though everything she sees reminds her of Bernie. And it frustrates her, because she thinks, really, that she never knew Bernie at all – not in any profound or fundamental sense, as she had, since their very first meeting, hoped she would. She doesn’t know the very truth of Berenice Wolfe, has not quite been able to unravel the threads of that particular puzzle; and so anything that reminds her of Bernie, she knows, only reminds her of the bits of Bernie that Bernie had allowed the world to see. 

She realises now, of course, what it is that she wants from Bernie; she wants to climb inside her skin and belong to her. She wants to love her, wholly and unreservedly and without restraint, and for Bernie to trust her enough to allow her to do that. She wants Bernie to be something tangible, and she’s terrified that she’s fallen in love with the _idea_ of Bernie instead of the actuality. 

For the first time in 45 years, when Serena thinks about that stupid doll, with its painted smile and its golden hair, she finds that she hates it. Who needs it anyway. What’s the good of something wonderful and beautiful if you never quite have it, if you can never appreciate it the way it should be appreciated. What’s the good of Berenice _bloody_ Wolfe, if she keeps all her best parts locked away, when all Serena wants to do is love her for them.

She hopes that it’s cold in the Ukraine. 

Eventually – and, perhaps, inevitably – Serena’s anger cools, and she begins to blame herself; for pushing too far, too fast. Bernie was barely divorced, and intensely private, and understandably uncomfortable with having her private business aired around the hospital; and there was Serena, declaring her love in the dingy basement, after exactly two kisses and a single thoughtful gesture that could or could not be construed as romantic. 

She might have learned more _facts_ about Bernie’s life in their many months of friendship, but she doesn’t think she’s really learned anything at all about the inner workings of her mind, or her heart. She wants to cry; and she does cry, frequently, to think that she loved – _loves_ \- Bernie so much, when Bernie, really, didn’t want her to love her at all. If she had, Serena thinks, she wouldn’t have hidden herself away, wouldn’t have deliberately kept her heart so far out of reach. For Bernie, _this was never supposed to happen_ \- the way Serena feels is in spite of Bernie's actions. Yet somehow, of course, it is also because of them, and it ties Serena in knots as she tries to decipher which bits of Bernie are really, genuinely, Bernie - or if they are somehow all her, every last, contradictory part of her.

She wonders if it’s possible to love Bernie without really knowing her in any real sense, and she decides that it is; that, with separation and silence, she has had the time to think about Bernie, to unravel her. _How strange it is_ , she thinks, _to know someone better by their absence_. She loves Bernie Wolfe, for everything that she is, as well as everything she’s kept hidden: loves her for her generosity, her quiet, unwavering support, the strength of her spirit, as well as her fear and selfishness. She thinks on some level that she knows, by what Bernie reveals, what she hides; and she senses that she could love that too, every flaw and foible and less than perfect part of her, if only Bernie would allow it.

So she sucks it up, and she sends the email: _I’m not angry anymore_. It seems too impersonal, compared to what she feels. She wants to say, _I know you, Bernie_ , but she’s not sure that she does. She wants to say, _I love you. Please, love me back_ , but she doesn’t dare. So she says something about the hospital, and its needs, and she shuts down the computer. Thinks about the difference between emotional and physical distance, and how horribly unfair it is that she must suffer both. Resolves that when Bernie returns from Kiev – and Serena is almost sure that she will, because she thinks she could begin to understand Bernie, now – that she will not make a single unsolicited move in Bernie’s direction until the woman herself decides to open up and share of her own accord. Thinks about the doll that sat on her Grandmother’s shelf for 20 years, and worries about how in all that time, she was never once allowed to touch it.


	3. Chapter 3

When Bernie finally makes her return, without fanfare, to the halls of Holby, Serena can’t see anything else. There is only Bernie; Bernie with her wild eyes and her nervous hands and her halo of messy golden hair, which seems to give off a light of its own under the fluorescent strip lighting of the ward. Serena is drawn to her like a particularly stupid moth.

She remembers the promise she made to herself – that she won’t push Bernie – but she can’t help wanting to keep her close, after so many weeks of silence. She can’t quite hide the quiver of excitement in her voice when she greets her, and she can’t help but tell her that she’d been so looking forward to her return it had been in pride of place on her calendar. Of course, she then immediately feels ridiculous, because this is the kind of behaviour that scares Bernie, that made her withdraw from Serena in the first place. 

The woman in question is awkward and quiet and makes no attempt to say much of anything beyond civilities. She doesn’t even greet Serena directly, just says ‘thanks, Fletch,’ when he welcomes her back and moves on. It’s not at all how Serena imagined their reunion, but she can’t even bring herself to be disappointed. She’s too excited – too relieved, too deliriously happy - to have Bernie back. She follows her around like a love-struck school girl, always reaching out but not quite daring to touch. She almost hates herself for it, because Bernie seems even further away than she had been before she’d gone to Kyiv; is nothing more than professional and courteous, and far more inscrutable than she’s ever been. She gives no indication that she’s missed Serena at all; at least, not in the way that Serena has missed her - a deep, visceral, full body ache.

As the day wears on and the excitement wears off, Serena begins to think that maybe she had imagined anything she might have felt between them; thinks it’s foolish of her, to have dared to dream that she could have ever reached beyond the ordinary and understood Bernie’s soul - to have imagined that Bernie might have wanted her to. Every time Serena makes an attempt to reach out to her, Bernie retreats, or evades - and Serena’s heart breaks a little more each time. 

But when Jason – wonderful, _brilliant_ Jason – locks them in their office together, and reveals to Serena exactly what Bernie had hoped to hide – _a gift; from me to you_ – Serena thinks she catches just a glimpse of Bernie’s own confused and broken heart. It’s the precise tone of voice in which she says ‘no – wait; I haven’t been entirely honest with you,’ and the unguarded, desperate expression on her face when she says it. Serena, for the first time, sees a Bernie willing to take a risk and open herself up to scrutiny, in a way she never has before, and she is nothing short of enchanted. Here is a little bit of Bernie, offered up to her almost willingly, and she feels dizzy with the excitement of it - with the absolute heady relief that Bernie is _talking_ to her, really, for the first time. She suddenly sees all of Bernie in great detail – little parts that she always recognised, idly and distantly, as part of the overall blinding image of _Bernie_ , but never really acknowledged as individual components: the mole on the right hand side of her chin, all but disguised by concealer and the angular shape of her jaw; how long and dark and impossibly thick her eyelashes are, blinking a little too rapidly as she struggles her way through a less than impressive apology; the unevenness of her parting, and how her teeth are just a little crooked, and how she has a slight overbite, and how the skin of her nose had freckled and peeled a little in her time away. She sees the lines around her eyes and mouth, and how her fringe is a little too long and hanging in her left eye. Serena, for the first time, sees all of Bernie as a tangible amalgamation of parts; every individual microscopic grain of her. 

She feels, for this brief moment, that Bernie is more real than she has ever been; than anything in the world has ever been to her before. There’s a certain kind of clarity that comes with such a monumental moment of revelation – of seeing a little of the truth of Bernie, at last – and every one of her senses feels heightened, her mind quick and infinitely powerful. She feels as though she is capable of anything, of learning every secret of the universe with very little trouble at all. Bernie is more real than anything she has ever known.

The moment doesn’t last, of course; how could it? Bernie closes up again; not, perhaps, because she doesn’t _want_ to be open with Serena, but because that sort of rawness of emotion is all but unsustainable. The same is true of Serena’s moment of clarity; for who could touch reality without a gloved hand and survive it? But she forgives Bernie because she is trying, and because she loves her. Because she loves the Bernie she has always known – the untouchable, beautiful, puzzling _ideal_ of Bernie – and she loves the Bernie she thinks she could know, who is flawed and human and, maybe, someone Serena could understand, if Bernie would let her. 

And slowly but surely, Bernie does.


	4. Chapter 4

They are catching their breath in the office during a rare quiet moment, with the door closed and the noise of the ward reduced to a distant hum. There is something about these liminal spaces that Serena adores, when time seems suspended on a shoe string, and she and Bernie are encased in a bubble of their own making. They have always made her feel as though she could reach out and touch her, though that has proven itself to be nothing more than an illusion. The last time she tried - in an empty hospital corridor, with the rush of a dying woman’s last request still echoing in their ears - she pushed too hard, and the illusion had shattered around her. So Serena doesn’t push at all any more, lest Bernie make another dash for the former Eastern Bloc. She tries to relax, and appreciate the moments for what they are, and Bernie, cautiously, seems content to follow suite.

Today though, there is something different about her. She’s not perched on the edge of Serena’s desk, as she is wont to do, but spinning herself back and forth a little on her own desk chair: 90 degrees to the right; and then back again; 90 degrees to the left; and then back again. She seems to be working herself up to something, and it’s making Serena unbearably anxious. There is always an undercurrent of anxiety now around Bernie, though Serena is still perhaps happier than she’s ever been. She will only acknowledge it in the darkest part of the night, when Bernie is snoring softly next to her, clutching at the corner of her pillow with one hot little hand. Sometimes, Serena thinks about reaching out to touch her, about interlacing their fingers and drifting off to sleep, but she doesn’t quite dare. 

“Out with it.” 

Bernie jerks, and the chair stops its spinning abruptly. 

“What?” She blinks those big brown eyes, and for a moment, Serena is tempted to let her off the hook. She can’t quite help herself though – prods a little further because she wants to sooth Bernie’s heart in a way, she knows, Bernie would want to sooth hers, if only she could admit to its unrest.

“Whatever it is that has you twitching like you’ve had twelve double shot espressos.” She doesn’t say what she wants to say – _that this is their private, silent space in time, and Bernie is disturbing the peace with her fidgeting_ – because she doesn’t want to discover that Bernie is insensible to the moments that she herself treasures so dearly.

Bernie looks at her for a moment, and Serena is suddenly struck by how much happier she seems since she returned from Ukraine – there is less tightness to the lines around her mouth, and her skin seems to glow a little bit. She looks like a woman who has satisfactorily settled something with herself; and, though Serena doesn’t dare to dream what, the look on her face must give Bernie the courage to speak. 

“You didn’t want to hold my hand.” 

And there it is; the first crack in Bernie’s carefully constructed identity revealed of her own accord, without having her hand forced by Jason. Serena recognises it for what it is – a monumental occasion for both of them, and an enormous gamble of trust for Bernie – but had honestly already almost forgotten the fleeting incident in the car park the previous morning. She considers Bernie for a moment – thinks about the opportunity she’s been presented with here, to weasel her way into Bernie’s inner life. She wants to force that crack wide open, to rummage around Bernie’s insides like the surgeon she is, to poke and prod and learn everything systematically and by heart. She wants to see how Bernie really feels, how scared she is of this – of them – and how much water her post-Ukraine promises could possibly hold, though she doesn’t doubt that Bernie has the best of intentions. But she knows now that it would be too much too soon – a lesson hard learnt. Instead she decides, tentatively, to be honest in turn; to perhaps encourage Bernie to reach out a little more, to allow Serena to grasp her wholly, just this once.

“Bernie…” She stops, and she is suddenly afraid. She doesn’t want to hurt Bernie unnecessarily – she meant it when she said she had let her anger go – but there is no small part of her that wants to make Bernie understand what she has done – what she has broken, in her dash for the freedom of Ukraine. She decides to cut her losses – Bernie did ask, after all. “I didn’t want to hold your hand, Bernie, because I don’t trust you.” 

There it is; out in the open, for both of them to examine. The truth, that niggling little worry that’s been gnawing away at Serena in the dead of night. She doesn’t trust Bernie anymore. Bernie looks stricken and tense, as pale and sick as patient out on the ward, and Serena worries that she’s caused another monumental Wolfe retreat, back into the shadows - back away behind the glass, out of reach, always out of reach, the doll up on the shelf, not meant for Serena’s clumsy hands – but Bernie nods, slowly, as though she expected it.

“Go on.”

Serena remembers to breathe. “I won’t subject myself to gossip again, Bernie.” She wants to stop talking, her desire to discuss her own feelings minimal at best after her last attempt, but Bernie looks as though she’s listening so intently that she forces herself to continue. “I won’t parade this – whatever this is – around the hospital, when people are only just beginning to forget it, only for you to decide that you can’t quite handle the heat and run away again to somewhere even further afield than Kiev. Because then I would look double the fool, wouldn’t I? Poor stupid Ms Campbell who never learns her lesson, who gets taken for a ride, over and over again. I forgave you Bernie, because I missed you, and I wanted you, and I will not deprive myself of what I want; God knows, I waited long enough, and I _deserve_ it. I will not make myself miserable for the sake of teaching you some sort of ill-conceived lesson. But can you understand why I might be hesitant to let every man and his dog know that I – that we – “ She tails off, and waves her hand vaguely between them.

Bernie sets her mug of tea down on a precariously balanced stack of files, and Serena resists the urge to reach out and put it on a steadier surface; Bernie can clear up the mess if it spills, she decides. 

There is a pause, and Bernie seems to be working herself up to something. “I - I can understand that. I know that what I did was – was unforgivable, really, and I know that you have no reason to think that I won’t do it again – no reason at all – and you are more forgiving than anyone should be. Far more forgiving than I deserve.” She laughs self-deprecatingly, and it sounds thick and choked with tears. “I don’t know why I’m crying, I asked the question, I wanted an answer – I just – I hate that I didn’t have the strength to stay, that I'm the way I am and couldn't just accept that this could be a good thing - a wonderful thing, for both of us - and I hate that you’re _afraid_ of me, and I hate that everything difficult about this is – is my own _fault_!”

She sniffs, and gazes at Serena with earnest, teary eyes. Honest eyes. Serena feels as though she could drown in them, could throw herself into them and be blessedly lost forever. She tentatively extends one hand across their desks and lets it rest on the stack of files, palm up. Bernie considers her for a moment, before mirroring the gesture, squeezing Serena’s hand affectionately, and just hard enough to hurt. They sit in silence, hands clasped and palms beginning to sweat, as their tea slowly cools, forgotten. When the peace of the office is eventually broken by Raf, and the delicate suspension of time is disrupted at last, it is Serena who withdraws first.

As she’s getting ready for bed that night, it occurs to her that the conversation in the office was the most willingly _open_ Bernie has ever been. She had reached out to Serena voluntarily, and made tentative contact. As though, after all this time, she wanted to let Serena in; close enough to touch.

Serena sleeps easily that night.


	5. Chapter 5

After that first, painful attempt at emotional vulnerability, Serena begins to notice Bernie doing it more frequently, and with greater ease; though she also notices that it is always on Bernie’s terms. There is no predictable pattern to it; no one situation or location that prompts a confession. She just works herself up to it, spits it out like it’s choking her, and retreats to a safe distance to watch Serena warily for a reaction. It’s fair enough, really, Serena thinks. She has no right to reach out and _demand_ something so intimate as … _well, what is it, old girl? What is confiding in someone, in the eyes of Bernie Wolfe_? 

It’s a question she considers, when she has a free moment. For Serena, being open and honest about what she is feeling and thinking has always been an intrinsic part of her nature. She enjoys it, those little moments of intimacy with another human being – finds it comforting, to touch souls, to create human connection, if only for an instant. It makes her feel certain and truthful and solid, in a world where so much is murky or unclear. Serena has always loved the definite, the tangible. To Bernie, she decides, confiding in someone is to allow herself to be seen; all that feeling, all that _weakness_. All that potential ammunition for someone to collect, and store, and shoot her with later. 

Serena doesn’t think that Bernie is devoid of feeling – quite the opposite, in fact. Sometimes, when she looks into Bernie’s eyes, she can see her force the shutters down – can see her actively feigning indifference. Locking everything away, putting it on its designated shelf out of reach. She can tell that Bernie takes a perverse sort of _pride_ in it; in her ability to compact everything inside her into a hard little ball, which takes up no space and bothers no one.

They’re eating their elevenses – an act so domestic that Serena’s heart sings with it – when it occurs to her that maybe, Bernie thinks she’s pathetic. It’s a silly, intrusive thought (and, she thinks, one probably wholly rooted in a 20 year marriage to one Edward Campbell) but once it’s there she can’t quite let it go.

“Do you find it… oh, I don’t know. Disgusting? Repellent?” 

Bernie blinks those long lashes. “My… my scone?” 

“Honesty. Emotional weakness. Leaning on people, using their strength. You know, like –“

“Like you?”

Serena nods.

Bernie considers her for a second, before shrugging. “Well, I don’t know if repellent is the word I’d use, but…”

Serena looks down at her plate. Picks up the butter knife. Holds it like a scalpel, momentarily – muscle memory, she supposes – before she remembers where she is, and uses it to spread her jam around. Focuses intently on covering every last bit of butter in strawberry, but they keep bleeding into each other and slipping off the sides of her scone – _does she really need this much jam, is Bernie still talking, God why did I ask her a question like that, what was I expecting her to say_ –

“ _Serena_.”

Serena realises her hands are shaking.

“Sorry, I’m sorry. What were you saying?” She forces the question from between gritted teeth. She doesn’t want to know – she can think of nothing she wants less, now she’s asked the question. She thinks, in this moment of pure, sickening panic, that maybe she doesn’t want to see the real Bernie after all. Maybe she can’t handle it; what on earth made her think she could? What on earth made her think that anyone should be able to prod around in someone else’s head, that anyone could _survive_ knowing the truth of someone else?

If she’d ever gotten her hands on that doll, she thinks, no doubt it would have been a disappointment. She’d probably discover that it was cheaply made, or full of spiders from so long spent on the shelf. Maybe it would’ve been so old and unused, it turned to dust in her hands. Much better that she keep her distance, that she just look, and admire, and not reach out her greedy, grasping little hands to touch.

“It’s not that I find it repellent, exactly,” Bernie is saying, oblivious to Serena’s desperate desire to backtrack, “So much as I – I don’t understand it. I don’t really see the need for it. I would feel selfish, lumping that kind of thing on other people - they don’t want to know about it. I always feel so… detached from it. It’s like watching something on screen – it seems so strange, and unreal, and I don’t know how to connect to it. I just… find it easier not do it. Why do you ask?”

Serena feels as though she’s listening to Bernie speak through a long and distorting tunnel. _Stupid stupid stupid stupid_ – 

“Serena? Are you okay?” 

- _Stupid stupid stupid_ – 

“Serena!”

Serena blinks. Stares down at her sad little scone. 

“Do you dislike it? When – when other people share with you? Do you think it’s weak?” The real question – _do you hate it when I try and share with you_ – remains unspoken.

“Christ, Serena, no! I think it’s… brave, I suppose. It’s like a horrible kind of vulnerability really, isn’t it? And it’s not one I would ever willingly subject myself to. And it seems so… alien… when I’m witness to it. And you’re right, I suppose I do feel… contempt, because sometimes I think, it must be weakness, that makes people willing to expose themselves like that. Emotional nakedness. I hate them sometimes, just a little bit. Because I think it’s pathetic, you’re right, but also because I know that it’s _not_ pathetic, and the only reason I think it’s pathetic is because it’s a vulnerability, but it’s also not one I’m capable of…”

Serena can feel her face beginning to twitch. She’s chosen a falsely neutral expression, but she realises now that it was a mistake, because this is not the kind of confession one can listen to and remain unaffected. She can feel herself starting to shrink within her own body, which feels more and more like a too large, ill-fitting costume the longer Bernie talks. She feels as though she has learned a lesson – that she should not try to reach out and grasp Bernie, but that Bernie must, of her own volition, reach out for Serena. It’s no good forcing her hand, because she’ll only hear things she doesn’t want to know. 

She notices, distantly, that Bernie is rubbing the back of her hand, but it feels cold – so cold. She’s not entirely sure that she can hear what Bernie’s saying anymore over the buzzing in her ears. She thinks she might just slides off her chair into a heap on the floor and wait for Bernie to leave the room. 

“Serena!” 

Serena tries to speak, to tell Bernie that it’s okay, that she should maybe just leave, but her tongue feels too thick, and she can’t quite make it work the way she wants it to. All she can see are Bernie’s eyes, big and brown, and seemingly growing bigger by the second, until there’s nothing else in her line of vision. She pulls herself together, eventually, because she can sense Bernie’s rising panic in the way she’s gripping her fingers, tighter and tighter. Manages not to balk at the thought of Bernie hating her for what she’s always prided herself on; for what she secretly desires from Bernie. 

“Would you, uh, rather I didn’t do it?”

Bernie looks at her blankly for a moment, and Serena sees the exact moment when it dawns on her - what she just said. It’s the same moment that warmth and feeling begins to return to Serena’s fingers.

“Serena, no! I didn’t mean it at all in the way you think – or at least, I did – but I don’t want to! Oh God, I’ve not said anything right. I just – I meant me, not you. I want to be like you more than anything in the world; I want to be able to open up – to show all that emotion. I just – I don’t know how. I don’t know how to reconcile it in my own mind – I veer so wildly between thinking it’s a strength in other and a weakness in myself that I don’t know what I think at all!”

“You said it was pathetic, Bernie.”

“I know! I know what I said, but I don’t know what I think! I don’t know if I meant it at all! All I know is that I feel so much… affection for you, and I want to know every part of you. It could never be a weakness in you. It’s your greatest strength. God, how could – how could _anything_ be a weakness in you?”

“But you think it’s a weakness in yourself, Bernie. What makes the difference?”

Bernie pulls her hand back, and Serena senses that she’s pushed beyond her remit. She senses that that little ball of compressed emotion is not made of steel, as Bernie would like her to believe, but porcelain - and she’s learning not to apply too much pressure, lest it shatter entirely beyond repair. She can’t resist one final comment, though - just to reassure them both.

“Bernie? I do want to know, you know. You’d never be a burden to me.”

Bernie nods sharply, once, lips pressed together so tightly they turn white at the edges. Serena returns the gesture with a smile, and doesn’t comment when Bernie abruptly leaves the table to busy herself at the sink.


	6. Chapter 6

Serena can tell that she’s made Bernie uncomfortable by prodding for answers. She skitters around like a nervous colt, all big, darting eyes and twitching hands, and Serena hates herself for saying anything at all. This Bernie is so unlike the persona she’s always presented publicly, that Serena finds it difficult to reconcile the two. Had she always known that this was a fundamental facet of Bernie? This fear? She thinks she might have guessed at it; thinks that the quiet cockiness about her own surgical abilities, the willingness to go toe to toe with Ric or Hanssen, the mulish set of her jaw when she doesn’t get her own way, has always been compensating for something. And here it is, revealed at last: Bernie Wolfe is afraid of herself. 

It seems appropriate, really, Serena thinks. That Bernie, who seems so fearless - who can brave warzones and suffer spinal injuries, and spearhead an experimental trauma unit without batting an eyelid - cannot confront herself, though she is an absolute and undeniable force of nature. Perhaps that’s exactly the problem, Serena thinks. Perhaps, _being_ Bernie is really the only thing that scares Bernie.

But Serena can also see that she’s _trying_. She’s trying to open up and share and feel some sort of connection to feeling that isn’t vague repugnance, and it’s beautiful in its own clumsy, hesitant way. 

Bernie pokes Serena awake in the early dawn light the morning after their argument – which remains, officially, unacknowledged as an argument - and offers up a small confession in lieu of an actual apology. 

“I never liked my teeth.” 

Serena recognises it for what it is; an olive branch. It’s an attempt to give Serena what she wants, without giving up anything of much importance at all. She thinks it feels a little hollow, but then chides herself immediately, because what does she expect? This is Bernie, the woman so out of touch with her emotions that she hot-footed it to Ukraine instead of acknowledging them. So she turns to Bernie, and tries to blink her eyes open, and asks why.

Bernie looks at her very seriously, as though she’s about to reveal the secrets of the universe, and Serena can’t help but find it endlessly endearing - even more so because Bernie is clearly blissfully unaware of the way her fringe is tufting at the front with static from the sheets like a little yellow duckling, or that her face covered in pillow creases. 

“Because there seems to be so _many_ of them. I know it’s only the normal amount, but you can see every last one when I smile, and I think it makes me look… sharky. That’s what Yvonne Parker told me in year 8 PE, and I’ve never forgotten it. That exact word – sharky. Lucky, really, that she didn’t pick up on all the opportunities ‘wolfish’ would have offered her.”

Bernie looks at Serena with satisfaction, like she’s spent hours picking out the perfect gift – which, Serena reflects, she probably has – and Serena doesn’t have the heart to tell her that really, it’s a bit naff. She knows that Bernie gives probably exactly zero shits about her teeth. She’s an army major, and a brilliant surgeon, very well respected in both fields, and, while she’s undeniably very beautiful, it’s absolutely not because she particularly wants to be. 

But Serena doesn’t want to discourage her – doesn’t want to dismiss anything Bernie says, ever – so she pats down her fluffy little fringe, and tells her that her teeth are lovely, instead of laughing in her face. What the hell else could she say, to something so trite? She doubts that Bernie has given the teeth incident any thought at all for at least 30 years before this morning, and she feels irrationally bitter about it. Bernie’s apologies always seem to fall a little short of the mark, and it’s par for the course, really, because as much as Serena might wish otherwise, she knows, deep down, that she has Bernie’s body, but not her mind. That, it seems, remains forever out of reach.

She feels cheated. She feels as though her insides have been frozen and replaced in the wrong order and left to chill her bones. For a moment, she’s filled with a sort of put upon sanctimony – _how dare Bernie be so evasive, when all Serena does is try to love her. Bernie is everything that is wrong with this dynamic, Serena is always doing the leg work and Bernie is sapping every last modicum of her strength and sanity like a beautiful blonde succubus_ – but even as she thinks it, she knows it’s not true. Knows that Bernie gives Serena everything she can - everything she has to give.

She looks at Bernie, lying so trustingly next to her in the grey morning light, all golden curls and big brown eyes, and is struck anew by how much she loves her. It surges in her chest and warms her cold bones, and Serena feels herself thaw a little. She knows, in that moment, that she would do anything for Bernie. ‘ _I would do anything to keep her close,_ ’ she thinks. ‘ _That’s what love is, I suppose_.’ 

Serena wants to say so many things to Bernie in that moment: that she knows Bernie is hiding from her; that she won’t hurt her, she only wants to help her; that she makes her so happy and so frustrated simultaneously that she can hardly think straight; that she _loves_ her. But Bernie trusts her, and is so tentatively trying not to second guess herself, that Serena doesn’t want to frighten her. So instead, she says nothing – just strokes her cheek, and smiles, and tells her to go back to sleep.


	7. Chapter 7

When Bernie talks about the army, Serena wants to put her hands over her ears and scream until her voice breaks. It's an urge that makes her feel like a helplessly petulant child, and it's so antithetical to her need to know everything about Bernie - but how could she want to listen to something like that? She cannot bear the thought of it; cannot reconcile the Bernie who is safe and warm tucked up in her own bed, with the Bernie who was in so much danger all the time – cannot reconcile her Bernie with the Bernie she knows she must have been, who, had she died, would have just been another name on a long list of names. _Hazards of the occupation_. She would never have been ‘Bernie’ to anyone but her children and Marcus – just another army medic, just another solider. 

She should be so many different, wonderful things, to so many people; and she so very nearly wasn't.

Serena refuses to think of someone she loves so much as anything but safe and happy; thinks of Bernie’s various scars and the sinew of her muscles in isolation, without giving thought to how she received them. Tries as hard as she can to disconnect them from her previous career. Bernie was born in February 2016 as far as Serena is concerned; she likes watching quiz shows with Jason and warming her cold toes on the fire grate, and savouring the last square of salted caramel chocolate from their shared bar of Green & Black's – and how could she have done any of that in the army?

But Serena also knows that her military career informs so much of who Bernie is – and she hates it, just a little bit. Wants to cradle Bernie to her chest and nurture her, wick away everything she’s seen and felt from her skin and take the pain upon herself; and the only way she can even _try_ to do that, is by listening to her horrible stories from a time when she wasn’t quite herself at all.

They’re out for a hike in the countryside, Bernie bouncing over turnstiles with reckless abandon, when she stops, puts down their rucksack – overpacked, as usual, with snacks and extra jumpers – and plops down at the foot of an oak. 

(Serena is only too grateful to follow suite, and subtly tries to fan some air up her shirt without Bernie thinking that she can’t keep up.)

“You know, when I first joined up, I was totally pathetic.”

Serena knows what she’s referring to. She also knows that she’s getting what she’s always wanted – a little glimpse at Bernie, a step closer to knowing her better than she knows herself – and thinks herself foolish for not realising that some of it would be so hard to hear. 

She bites down the scream, and instead asks, “Were you?”

“Oh completely. Couldn’t even lift my pack off the ground for the first week. Didn’t build up any muscle until… oh, the first month was over probably. I was a sight. Too much limb, too much nose, over starched uniform; but I tried so hard. I so badly wanted to do well. The lads used to laugh at me, said they’d carry me and my pack and their own pack with no problem, and this one guy, O’Neill, he must have been about 6”5, he actually did it – took the challenge, picked me up under my arms, and marched me on a lap around the parade ground.”

Bernie falls silent, lost in her own memories, and Serena tentatively nudges her with her shoulder.

“What about when you got out there?”

Bernie laughs ruefully. “Pathetic, once again. Fainted in the heat, twice. Sweated, burned, cried when no one could see me. I sorted myself out after about 6 weeks, but God, that first month… you know, I think it was the hardest of my life?” She looks at Serena with wonder. “I had completely forgotten how much I hated it until just now. I suppose I’ve been telling myself since I was decommissioned that the army was the best days of my life, but I’d forgotten so many little parts of it. Isn’t memory a funny thing?”

She looks so peacefully bemused, that Serena smiles. 

“What happened to your friend? O’Neill?”

There is a pause.

“He died,” Bernie says shortly. “Two years later. Mortar blast. It was nobody’s fault, just one of those things.”

Serena flinches, and instinctively reaches out for Bernie’s hand. 

“I’m sorry.” 

She expects Bernie to withdraw back into herself, and is surprised instead when she entwines her fingers with her own and offers her a soft smile.

“Thank you.”

They don’t say anything after that; just sit in silence, hands clasped, as they watch the watery winter sun sink lower in the sky. It is not until after dusk, when Serena’s bum is well and truly numbed by the cold ground, that she finally pulls them to their feet.

Bernie looks at her with an impish smirk, and Serena knows exactly what she’s going to say.

“No. Absolutely not.”

Bernie ignores her. “Race you!” she shouts over her shoulder, and darts off into the darkness, seemingly exhilarated and lightened by the adrenaline of confessing something.

“Bernie – Bernie, I’m not running after you,” Serena calls into the darkness, thinking longingly of the sports bra tucked away in a drawer at home somewhere, and the blister on her right heel. “Ber – oh for heaven’s sake. Sod it.”

She zips up her jacket and barrels after Bernie, laughing.


	8. Chapter 8

“Did you ever like the Bay City Rollers?” Serena once asks casually as they rummage around an old record shop, purely for something to do on a free Sunday. She’s not sure what brings the question to mind, except there’s something about the smell of the place that reminds her of her early teen years - all 5p bubble gum and blue eye shadow and posters carefully cut from Jackie magazine. It makes her feel curiously, lightly dreamy, and quietly desperate to press her softened soul to Bernie’s.

“I’m a lesbian,” Bernie replies dryly, as though that in itself is somehow a clear and definitive answer about her late-70s music preferences, and then stiffens. She looks around nervously, as though she expects someone to jump on her and drag her out to the alley round the back, and Serena is suddenly struck by how different their teenage experiences must have been. 

“I just mean, ah, their appeal was mainly… physical. And I obviously wasn’t. Um. There for that. From them. Ah, why? I suppose you had the tartan, did you?”

Serena pointedly ignores the way Bernie is avoiding her eye, and says, in her most deliberately breezy tone: “oh yes. Big Eric Faulkner fan. Had his scarf up above my bed until I went away to uni.” 

Bernie wrinkles her nose in bemusement, seems to mutter something about how there’s _no accounting for taste_ , and turns her attention back to the Roxy Music LP in her hand. She studies the sleeve a little too intently to be genuinely interested in it, and Serena realises that this is the first time she’s actually heard Bernie use the ‘L’ word out loud. She can see the tension in the line of Bernie’s spine, and feels her own heart clench painfully. 

She realises, in that moment, that the more time she spends with Bernie, the less Bernie needs to say in order to be understood. Serena doesn’t need Bernie to _verbally_ tell her anything about the way she’s struggled against an identity for so long: the way she must have cringed as a girl when the term ‘lesbian’ was hurled around as an insult in the PE changing rooms; the way she must have kept her mouth shut and her eyes down, been as unassuming and inoffensive as possible, just so it was never directed towards her. The way she must have begged and prayed to whichever higher power may have been listening, to _just let it be a phase_ , to tell her that _all teenage girls question their sexuality for a while, it’s just hormones, it’s not real_ , that the right man would come along and she could join in the boy-talk without feeling like a fraud, and be _just like everyone else_. Serena knows all this, without having to ask, just by looking at the way she holds herself now, and wonders why she’s never noticed before, just how far Bernie has come. How _brave_ she is, to have struggled so hard and so long. 

She has spent so much time looking at Bernie from afar, ruminating on how untouchable she seems – _but never intangible, god no; Bernie is more real to her than anything_ \- that Serena never realised just how close Bernie has allowed her to get. Closer perhaps, than anyone. 

She watches as Bernie slowly relaxes and angles her face towards the warmth of the sun streaming through the window, and knows that she has never loved her more. Links their arms, and squeezes hard, and says “let’s go get lunch.”

//

Serena is halfway through a tuna panini when she thinks to ask Bernie who she _had_ liked to listen to as a teenager. 

Bernie smirks and blushes. “Siouxsie and the Banshees. I, ah, really liked Siouxsie Sioux.” 

Serena squints contemplatively at Bernie. Takes in all those bouncing blonde curls, the establishment-friendly army career, the inoffensive blue blazer shrugged over the back of her chair. Wonders if she can see Bernie listening to something so avant-garde, so strange and unearthly. Remembers that little spike of steel hidden in her soul, her strange, quiet strength and struggle, and decides that she can.

“It suits you,” she says softly, at last. “I can think of nothing that suits you better.”

Bernie smiles at her tentatively, as though she’s confused by Serena’s earnestness.

“So,” Serena says to break the tension. “Did you follow the fashion? Wild make up, wild hair, lots of leather?”

“Ah, no. My mother would not have been impressed. I mean, she wouldn’t have _stopped_ me, but she'd have been a little disappointed. And that was something I didn’t ever want to do - disappoint her.”

Serena nods in understanding. That’s something she knows all too well – the pressure of expectation.

“You know,” Bernie continues, “Charlotte was really into Siouxsie Sioux when she was about 16? She used to send me letters all about her when I was away, asking if I’d ever been to a concert, if I had any memorabilia she could look at. And I, I was delighted. I was – oh, I was so happy, because I thought, ‘here is something we both enjoy. Here is something we can bond over, and share, and then – then maybe she’ll love me, as much as she loves Marcus.’”

Serena wants to reach out, and tell Bernie that she’s sure Charlotte loves her every bit as much as she loves her father; but she knows it would ring hollow, because it’s probably not quite true. Everyone has a parent they love just a little bit more than the other one, after all; she herself certainly had. Instead, she inches herself closer in the booth until they’re sitting pressed together from hip to shoulder. Silently waits to see if Bernie will continue.

“And then it didn’t matter anyway, because by the time I’d replied, Marcus had already been into the loft and brought down all my old posters and t shirts for her to have. And by the time I got home, she’d moved onto something else and put them back in the box, and the opportunity was gone.” Her voice breaks a little, and she suddenly seems very interested in toying with the crust of her sandwich. “And now… she won’t even speak to me.”

“Oh Bernie,” Serena breathes, as she watches her try not to cry in the middle of Costa. “Come here.”

Bernie needs no further encouragement; she burrows her head in Serena’s chest, and cries for everything she never had. 

Serena, for her part, cradles her close, shields her face from the rest of the – thankfully empty – café, and silently wishes that Bernie could be happy.


	9. Chapter 9

Not everything Serena learns about Bernie is unhappy of course. 

Bernie often regales her with hilarious nuggets of information from her childhood: the story of the time she got stuck up a tree for hours avoiding a hungry raccoon she fed while on holiday in Vancouver; her role as Mary in her primary school nativity play, when she dropped the baby Jesus on his head and made all three wise men and an angel cry; some particularly funny med student shenanigans involving six stolen traffic cones, washing-up liquid, and a Human League concert. All these tiny snippets – these casually offered pieces of information about her past and the person she used to be – come so easily to her now, and Serena cherishes them as much as she cherishes her own most treasured memories. Pieces together a real and solid Bernie Wolfe from the various assorted parts, and loves her just as much as she had loved the idea of her.

There is a strange and charming childlikeness to Bernie, in spite of the horrors she has seen and endured, and it makes itself manifest at the most unexpected of moments; a well-timed prank orchestrated with Dr Copeland in Albie’s as they cackle behind the bar, or hours spent curled up in a brightly coloured play tent with Mikey and Theo, driving their remote-controlled car into Fletch’s legs as he tries to hoover. It’s almost unexpected, to the uninitiated; Bernie seems at turns too belligerent and too reserved to be anything but serious, until she smirks her secret smirk and her eyes begin to dance, and her face is entirely transformed. Those are the moments, Serena thinks, when she loves Bernie the most; when she allows herself to be free of expectation. 

To Serena’s enduring delight, late March brings an unpredicted late snowfall, and with it an ecstatic and bouncing Bernie. She wakes to find the other side of the bed cold, and assumes that Bernie has just gone for a morning run - she doesn’t worry that she’s running scared, not anymore - until she hears an unmistakable laugh from the garden below. She peeks her head through the crack in the curtains, and feels cool air puff and waver a little across her cheeks as something hits the window pane. Peering down into the garden, she is greeted by the welcome sight of Bernie Wolfe, cheeks ruddy and eyes sparkling as she preps another snowball, blonde curls tucked haphazardly beneath a bobble hat. 

‘ _I love her_ ,’ she thinks.

“Come on Serena! Look at it! What a treat!”

Serena shakes her head. _Absolutely not. No. She is 51 years old, her joints crack in the cold, she is not going to roll around in the snow. Not a chance in hell. She hasn’t even had her morning coffee_. She goes back to bed with a huff, burrows into her duvet, and slips into a doze with a contented sigh…

Only to be rudely awakened 15 minutes later by a handful of snow shoved down the back of her pyjama top.

She throws herself out of bed, spluttering and gasping.

“Oh, you are so on!”

//

They fall through the kitchen door an hour later, clutching at each other and laughing so hard that Serena feels as though her stomach might drop out of her entirely. Jason, perched primly at the breakfast bar, raises his eyebrow in chastisement – ‘ _must you be so loud, Auntie Serena_ ’ - before pointedly carrying his toast off to the sitting room.

They laugh even harder.

Serena looks over at Bernie, whose face is open and unguarded and filled with pure, unadulterated joy, and can’t help but throw her arms around her and squeeze with all her might. Thinks ‘ _do I dare, yet? Do I dare to tell her that I love her_?’ She pulls away, and studies her face – takes in all those little parts she’s always adored but had never really _seen_ until Bernie came back from Ukraine and opened her heart a crack - and marvels at how far they’ve come. 

“You know,” she says, arms still hanging loosely around Bernie’s shoulders, “when I first met you, you reminded me of this old doll my grandmother had?”

Bernie snorts, and tugs at her hat self-consciously. “Was it the hair?”

“No, don’t be daft.” Serena feels a little foolish now – wishes that she hadn’t begun this story, beguiled by the moment, because she hasn’t really thought through how… personal it is. Worries that Bernie won’t understand, and their shared closeness might turn out to be an easily shattered illusion.

“Well?” Bernie prompts her.

“Okay, ah, yes. Well you see, this doll. It was up on the shelf above her bed – my granny’s, that is – and I… oh I wanted her so badly. She was the loveliest thing I’d ever seen – one of those fancy Edwardian ones, with ringlets and a little straw hat with a cream ribbon on it, and a pursed up rosebud mouth, you know? Horribly expensive, probably, but I kept hoping – brat that I was - that one day, maybe my grandmother would sort of… sense, how much I wanted this doll and just give her to me. She never did of course, so I had to content myself with just looking. I’ve always craved beautiful things, you see. I like to have them about me. And then I met you, and you were just – this exciting, wonderful, tantalising puzzle that I could never quite get close enough to to touch, and I – well, I wanted you too. More than I ever wanted anything. You were so… bright and brilliant and – don’t go getting a big head – the most beautiful thing I’d ever encountered in my life. And I suppose I almost worried I wouldn’t know what to do with you once I had you – if I ever had you – because you’re – well, you’re _you_. Lovely, and intriguing, and... so hard to grasp.”

Bernie frowns at her, and loosens her arms from around her waist. “And do you think you have me now?”

“Oh, I hope I do! I mean, sometimes it seems as though I do – like… maybe I could understand you. Like maybe you want me to?”

“I do,” says Bernie softly. “More than anything, I do.”

“Then… why the reticence?”

“Because… I – I was – I am - so afraid that when you finally see me, you might not… want me – or – that I might not be… what you wanted me to be.”

Serena clasps her hand earnestly, and squeezes so hard Bernie’s knuckles begin to turn white. “No, Bernie, never! It’s so much better, to have you like this! Everything you are – or could be, or will be – it makes me love you _more_ , do you understand?”

It echoes into the silence between them – ‘ _love_.’ Serena drops Bernie’s hand like it’s burnt her and steps away. Doesn’t quite dare to look up, until Bernie clears her throat.

Hates herself a little bit, when all Bernie says is “do you want hot chocolate?”


	10. Chapter 10

The days following what Serena mentally refers to as ‘The Hot Chocolate Incident’ are… uncomfortable, to say the least.

She can barely look at herself in the mirror without cringing – ‘ _stupid, stupid idiot, do you never learn, will you ever manage to keep your big mouth shut_ ’ – and attempts to occupy herself by micromanaging AAU’s less senior medical staff, much to the disgust of both Raf and Morven. She feels as though she’s staring at Bernie through the wrong end of a telescope. They don’t speak about it – about Bernie’s second unspoken rejection of Serena’s feelings – but there’s a modicum of tension there again, and she wants to cry at her own thoughtless, pig-headed stupidity. Forcing Bernie Wolfe to talk about feelings is like trying to perform surgery with a hacksaw, she has discovered; usually ineffective, and invariably messy. And she still just had to _niggle_. Had to give it one last little go, had to just let it slip out. _At least she didn’t bolt for Ukraine this time_ , Serena consoles herself. _Progress, surely_? 

She finds herself thinking about their first meeting frequently now; about that stupid, symbolic cigarette, specifically. She’d called it ‘a bit pants’ at the time, because it seemed like such a tiny, ineffectual object, to imbue with so much personal meaning. ' _Freedom, Independence, The Person I Used To Be_ '. Too small, for something so mighty. She hates it now, because she realises that the stupid thing was _probably stale anyway_. It was _pointless_.

 _How’s that for a fucking metaphor, Berenice Wolfe_.

Serena understands how difficult it is for Bernie, after so long in the shadows, to finally step out into the sun, because she understands _Bernie_ ; but she also knows that Bernie could be brave enough to do it now, if she just set her mind to it and took the plunge. 

//

A month passes, and then two, and the conversation is not revisited. The embarrassment and disappointment lessen with time, and the tension eases, and Serena begins to think that maybe, she doesn’t need Bernie to say the actual words, because she shows it in so many other ways. That little post-Ukrainian niggle - that private worry, that her love is too deep, that it will only wound her – is gone, and it occurs to her that it’s because she _trusts_ Bernie now. Trusts her in the same way she had before she left – to support her decisions professionally and personally, to ‘have her back,’ as it were – and trusts her on a deeper, somehow softer level, born of months of intimacy; of waking to her warmth in the soft morning light, of knowing her in stillness, as well as in motion. 

Besides, Bernie seems as though she’s working herself up to something, of late. She lurks around corners at work and stares at Serena as though she’s trying to figure something out; and she gets up even earlier on her Sundays off than she does when she’s working, and brings Serena her coffee in bed before rushing out of the house and disappearing for most of the day. When Serena eventually asks her where she goes, Bernie just grins, and kisses her on the nose, and tells her that it’s a surprise. 

//

Serena’s scrubbing bolognese off the dinner pots when she senses her sneak silently round the kitchen door. _I could never do that before Ukraine_ , she thinks. _Know where she is without looking_. She is always aware of Bernie, now. Her presence hums like a warm, comforting buzz at the back of her mind, and Serena can’t help but draw strength from it. 

“We’ll have to get you a bell,” she says, without turning round. 

Bernie snorts, and puts something – _a paper bag maybe, judging by the sound_ – down on the table. 

“Could you, ah, leave the dishes for a second?” 

Serena freezes, hands still clutching the sodden dishcloth. Feels the bubbles pop against her wrists. A stray onion laps against her knuckle. ‘ _Oh God, there’s something wrong with Bernie_.’ 

She focusses on the spirals of oily fat floating on top of the water. 

“What is it?”

She hears Bernie shuffle a little, then the scrape of a chair being pulled out from the table. It bangs jarringly against the radiator as she sits down, and still, Serena has not moved.

“Please, just… come here. Before I lose my nerve?”

Serena nods, and dries off her hands. Perches herself on the edge of the table, and tries to feign total disinterest in the contents of the bag.

“What’s wrong, Bernie?”

Bernie blinks, and then shoots her a tight smile. “Oh, nothing’s wrong,” she says with a laugh.

Serena stares at her. “Don’t lie to me, you’re wringing your hands like Lady Macbeth under that table. Classic Wolfe tell. So, spit it out. What’s. Wrong.”

Bernie holds up her hands like she’s been caught out, and opens her mouth. Closes it again, and instead slides the bag over towards Serena. 

“Don’t – don’t open it. Until, ah, until I – explain first.”

Serena senses not to push, and stays silent. 

“Okay, well – I’m – not – _great_ – at self-expression, when it comes to this kind of thing, and I’ve ah – given this a lot of thought so – so please just listen?”

“… Yes, Bernie, of course, but –“

“Okay, thanks. Ah, thank you. Well first of all, the other week, when you said – when you said that you – ah – that you _loved me_ – I reacted… horribly. And I didn’t mean to – I was, well, ecstatic, actually, but - I just needed to think some things through, because – well, I never thought of love as _real_ , before, I suppose. I mean, there is of course the unfortunate – ah, 40 plus years of repression, to consider, but I always thought that perhaps I expected more than it is possible to experience – I mean, I had so much _capacity_ for emotion – not perhaps in any deep or meaningful sense, but certainly in flashes of – of rage or lust or a kind of longing I could never put a name to – but I just – I couldn’t fall in love with anything _tangible_. Just ideas, or concepts, or pictures. Never anything solid – never any _one_ solid, and – and –“

Serena reaches out a hand to grasp at Bernie’s, and she feels the tension leave her when she smiles encouragingly. She feels Bernie’s pulse against her finger, hammering like a frightened rabbit, and her own heart quickens in response.

“Go on, Bernie.”

“Well – I – I met you, and I – I didn’t recognise it for what it was, because I’d never _felt_ it before. And it was so – so terrifying and exhilarating – and I do love you, I hope you know that. I do. I just – I never thought that I would fall in love. Not properly. But I couldn’t stop thinking about what you said – about the doll, and not being able to touch it – about not being able to touch _me_ \- and – I didn’t want to just tell you, I wanted to show you, and maybe I left it too long but - well, I got you this.” 

She shoves the bag across the table and immediately folds her arms across her chest defensively. Serena almost doesn’t dare to open it. Except Bernie is staring at her with expectant eyes, like she thinks this is the last piece of the puzzle she needs to finally be free of the person she used to be, and so, with trepidation, Serena peeks inside. 

“I… I don’t – where did you - ”

“I looked everywhere for it. For you. I tried the antique shops in Holby on my lunch breaks at first, but they didn’t have anything like it – what you described. So I started going to antique fairs on Sundays. Eventually, I drove up to this little village in Yorkshire – I emailed this woman on the internet, you see – and anyway, she said she could help. So. Here it is.”

Serena is silent; feels as though everything in the world has stopped moving, as though she can feel the heartbeat of the earth inside her own chest. Stars; elements; aether; Serena; suddenly all in alignment, for the first time in her life.

“You understood.”

It’s so simple a statement, but Bernie nods, and smiles, because she does – she _understands_.

“But – how?”

“I don’t know if it’s the actual doll – if it even looks like her, really, but it’s more of a symbol anyway and –“

“Oh!” Serena cries, though she couldn’t be happier than she is in this moment. “You and your bloody _metaphors_ , Berenice Wolfe!”

And suddenly she is kissing Bernie as she has a thousand times before; but she’s finally _touching_ her really, at last, for the first time, as she has always wanted to do – her soul, her soul, Bernie’s soul, she can feel it, she has her - and whispering between breaths that she loves it, that she will cherish it, that she will cherish _her, Bernie, thank you, thank you for giving me everything, I love you, I love you, I love you_. I need _you_.

And Bernie, unafraid, gives herself over to Serena: “you have me; you have me; you have always had me.” 

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyway, I feel like this has reached the end of its natural life (and certainly the end of my very short attention span) so I've finished!  
> Thank you so much for reading, and for leaving such consistently lovely comments, you're all wonderful!


End file.
